Lia Timson

It’s official. Australians have well and truly embraced the digital age.

A new annual report by Deloitte Australia has found the proportion of Australians owning three electronic devices – a smartphone, a tablet and a laptop – has climbed to 53 per cent, from 28 per cent last year.

Smart kids: Gabrielle Jamison and her children Marcus, William and Georgina. Photo: Steven Siewert

Three in four people are now using those gadgets to consume multiple sources of news and social media at the same time as watching TV, which is only just hanging in there as the preferred method of entertainment for Australians of all ages.

The Deloitte Media Consumer Survey, released on Wednesday, found Australia is on the cusp of the much-anticipated "digital tipping point", where more people use the internet for information and entertainment than traditional offline methods.

It found 63 per cent of respondents are now using online media for social, personal and entertainment use, compared with 64 per cent who still choose television.

The figures are much higher among younger age groups, with 70 per cent of 14 to 30-year-olds choosing the internet instead of TV, listening to music, reading books or going to the movies.

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“Digital disruption has happened," said Deloitte partner Stuart Johnson. "There’s no doubt as a population we have moved to a digital way of life."

The internet as an entertainment source has grown 10 per cent year on year since the first survey three years ago.

The report forecasts an even faster demise for TV in favour of online entertainment in the next 12 months, saying by then 26 per cent of people will most likely watch most, if not all, their content downloaded or streamed over the internet, while 32 per cent will watch a mix of physical media and digital media.

The proportion of people who will stick with watching physical media (TV, DVDs, discs) most or all the time will drop to 42 per cent.

Another interesting trend has emerged from the report, however. Australians appear to be showing a penchant for long-form content.

While 35 per cent now prefer their newspaper content in digital format compared with 30 per cent who prefer printed newspapers, they are still choosing printed newspapers on weekends and printed magazines over digital copies, and indulge in TV content “bingeing” when they find a show they like, such as Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad.

The report found 72 per cent binge on such content by watching several episodes at once, whether via download, TV or streamed.

Report co-author Niki Alcorn said while the survey did not ask why people’s habits had changed, she believed time constraints and multiple demands on busy lives meant people would remove themselves from the day-to-day to watch and read at length, to satisfy a need to indulge in rich, uninterrupted entertainment.

“There’s no doubt there’s a change in social behaviour," Mr Johnson said. "The content is being released en masse. The technology is presenting the opportunities and as consumers we’re saying we want to do that. We are taking up the choices."

The report found Australia has more "digital omnivores", at 53 per cent, than the US (37 per cent) and Japan (17 per cent), but fewer than Norway and China (57 and 63 per cent respectively).

It also showed how the new digital paradigm continues to present challenges for newspaper publishers, with 92 per cent of consumers refusing to pay for online news because it is too widely available for free.

Only those aged 25 to 30 showed more willingness to pay for news, at 16 per cent.

Do you agree? How are you consuming entertainment? Tell us in the comments.